Hi, my name is Meetch and I've been playing RuneScape for a very, very long time. Not always continuous, my recent hiatus is coming from 2016, where even then I simply was on for a month to check out some of the new bosses. This time around, I wanted to see the new skills and give them a test drive, along with everything else that has been updated since.

The most enjoyable part of this past month has been the Mining and Smithing rework. From the days of old, having 99 smithing to craft a rune platebody to wear at level 40 was more than a bit ridiculous, so I am glad that is gone. But the overall flow of it is amazing, you get 50 mining, smithing => you make something that you need level 50 attack or defense to wield or wear. It's so smooth I wanted to test it out from a fresh account, so I made an ironman to see exactly how smooth everything went together. The highest highs of the new mining and smithing model also show some of the lower lows of the rest of the wearable artisan skills. Both ranged and magic have significant pitfalls when it comes to some of the leveling.

I will say I am totally fine with bossing for items/weapons/armor as it is part of the game to make the bosses worthwhile besides the big drops. I also don't mind being able to smith higher level armor (like the masterwork armor) when you can kill bosses to get it as well, if there are additional niceties that are dropped by the boss. I will argue some points about logistics trying to get into bossing for an ironman/do it yourself kind of playstyle.

The Issues

Ranged is a big one, and it starts pretty early. T30 Carapace armor isn't too bad to get, kill some c*ckroaches for it and it's a consistent drop. T38 crafting to craft the full set isn't bad at all either, but it's not quite like the M&S where T30 is T30 is T30. T30 weapons, maple bows, are crafted at T45 fletching. I've been getting around this by smithing throwables instead, to stay on level with my combat tier.

T40 is where it gets bad though. Green dragonhide. 40 combat stats means you'll be mid 50s combat level about the time you get here. Killing a level 63 is not too bad either, especially since you only need 20 or so hides to make yourself a full set. The fact is, though, that you'll be doing this in T30 armor (I don't count weapons cause again, throwables). But then you need 63 crafting to make you full set of T40 armor. That doesn't get any better either, ending up at 93 to wear a T65 Royal Dragonhide Body. Not to mention that Death Lotus is T85 and can be made at 85 as well, so it will never be done after the ports are finished. Really, the only reason Royal was placed so high on the crafting side of things is because Black D'hide was already level 75-85.

Fletching another can of worms that touched on, where something like a T60 bow needs 90 fletching to make. Things scale grossly out of proportion simply because of the tier every 10 for combat vs tier every 15 for fletching/woodcutting/etc. Most of these just need to be flattened either to match with the combat, or bring up combat stats to tiers that match fletching. Again, I completely go around this by smithing on tier throwables.

The other major gripe is I can go and mine mithril and coal, smelt it together, and smith myself a full set of armor. Killing for resources isn't too bad, but take the case of magic now. T50 is mystic, dropped from the Mole, KBD, Ankous and a few others. Ankous are the way to get them for most ironman accounts, but it's still a very low drop rate. But there's no way to get them without killing anything, nothing like mining is.

I also would like Runecrafting to have a larger part in creating magic weapons/armor rather than "Oh, you have 40 RC, you can create this wand with some plain old logs that you got cutting down a basic tree". That seems lazy and with how much work it takes to get some of the higher tier armor done in M&S, there should be something else here.

Lastly is the masterwork armor problem. Why does melee get all the nice things? I don't like melee, it's xp waste having to level two skills rather than one. When do we get magic and ranged craftable masterwork armor? I love that it's real work to both create and be able to create.

The Solutions

I can't go on a rant without proposing some solutions.

We already have a solution in Daemonheim. They use the tiering system to handle ranged and magic armor similar to outside Daemonheim, but they use a system of collecting types of threads to weave and then craft them. Why not just put something similar in the world? "But how" you might say, "There's no collecting skill that goes along with crafting".

We have a way to grow these things. Think about jute farming. Give it the same tier in farming to grow these seed in a flower patch, or a new patch. You could also put some collection bushes around to make it easier for ironmen without seeds. Even if you leave everything in there, and just make new cloth based threads, would still be 100% easier logistically going through the 40s-70s until you really start getting into bossing.

We have a way to make these things, in the spinning wheel and the loom. Spin the threads into sheets. In the same way that we can do improvement in the forge/anvil, we can in the loom as well. Create a xxxxx armor + 1/2/3/4/5.

With this new system, we can also make new "masterworked" armors in the similar sense for ranged and magic. I'm okay with leaving craftable weapons where they are, or T80 where melee is.

I do not see this as being as large of a rework as mining and smithing, and I don't really need it to be either, just give levels 40-70 a more consistent combat tier == crafting tier and give the top tier stuff to the magic and ranged classes.

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